al sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes so easily, may not be
always found, but the material landscape is never far off. We can
find these enchantments without visiting the Como Lake, or the Madeira
Islands. We exaggerate the praises of local scenery. In every landscape
the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth,
and that is seen from the first hillock as well as from the top of the
Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest
common with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the
Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the
colors of morning and evening will transfigure maples and alders. The
difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is
great difference in the beholders. There is nothing so wonderful in any
particular landscape as the necessity of being beautiful under which
every landscape lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty
breaks in everywhere.

But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of readers on this topic,
which schoolmen called natura naturata, or nature passive. One can
hardly speak directly of it without excess. It is as easy to broach in
mixed companies what is called "the subject of religion." A susceptible
person does not like to indulge his tastes in this kind without the
apology of some trivial necessity: he goes to see a wood-lot, or to look
at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral from a remote locality,
or he carries a fowling-piece or a fishing-rod. I suppose this shame
must have a good reason. A dilettantism in nature is barren and
unworthy. The fop of fields is no better than his brother of Broadway.
Men are naturally hunters and inquisitive of wood-craft, and I suppose
that such a gazetteer as wood-cutters and Indians should furnish facts
for, would take place in the most sumptuous drawing-rooms of all the
"Wreaths" and "Flora's chaplets" of the bookshops; yet ordinarily,
whether we are too clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from whatever
cause, as soon as men begin to write on nature, they fall into euphuism.
Frivolity is a most unfit tribute to Pan, who ought to be represented
in the mythology as the most continent of gods. I would not be frivolous
before the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce
the right of returning often to this old topic. The multitude of false
churches accredits the true religion. Literature, poetry, science are
th